1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for producing a talk-back voice in a voice recognition system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, many voice recognition systems produce a talk-back voice which is used when a voice-recognized character string is read out for the purpose of confirming the voice-recognized character string based on the articulated voice of a user, or the like.
As a technique for producing a talk-back voice in such a voice recognition system, it is known to produce a talk-back voice in an accent similar to the accent in the articulated voice of the user (see Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1999 (H11)-175082 and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-37423, for example).
With a character string such as a telephone number or a password in which characters are arbitrarily ordered, there may be cases in which the user has memorized the character string with delimiting points peculiar to the user. For example, there may be a case where he/she memorizes the format [area code]-[local office number]-[subscriber number] of a telephone number as 0246-36-0123 which is differently delimited from the actual format of 024-636-0123.
In this case, when the talk-back voice is a character string without delimiting points or with predetermined delimiting points, the user cannot easily distinguish the accuracy of a voice-recognized character string, because of the different delimiting points of the character string in the talk-back voice. For example, in the case of recognizing the telephone number 0246360123 which has been memorized by a user as 024-636-0123 as described above, when the talk-back voice is produced as “0246360123” without delimiting points or when the talk-back voice is produced as “0246 36 0123” with actual delimiting points based on the area code, the local office number and the subscriber number, the delimiting points of the telephone number that the user had memorized are different from the delimiting points of the telephone number in the talk-back voice. Accordingly, the user may feel uncertain in distinguishing the accuracy of the voice-recognized telephone number.